Inside Nollywood, the booming film industry that makes 1,500 movies a year. Arts Oct 24, 2017 2:33 PM EDTIn 1992, after years of watching only imported American, Indian or Chinese films, Nigeria’s local film industry had its first real hit. “Living in Bondage,” a straight-to-video dramatic thriller, followed a man who sacrificed his wife to a satanic cult and afterwards was haunted by her ghost. Many mark the film as the unofficial start of Nigeria’s home-grown film industry, dubbed “Nollywood,” which produces an incredible 1,500 or more movies a year — vastly more than Hollywood, and second in number only to India’s film industry, Bollywood. Today, Nollywood films are available globally on cellphones, Netflix and YouTube, and on streets across Africa. In her new book “Nollywood: The Making of a Film Empire,” journalist Emily Witt argues that Nollywood is positioned to become a global brand much like the films of Bollywood or kung fu movies. This despite the many obstacles filmmakers might face: electricity cuts, fuel scarcity, political instability and more. “There were a lot of films in Nigeria through the years, but none spoke our voice.”The book’s introduction, as relayed to Witt by Nigerian documentary filmmaker Femi Odugbemi, describes how cinema and other culture in Nigeria was dominated for decades by the narratives of the colonialists. (Nigeria was under British rule from 1901 to 1960, when an independence movement led to self-government.) But then, Odugbemi told Witt, “People who were the consumers began to become the storytellers… There were a lot of films in Nigeria through the years, but none spoke our voice. None recognized our existence as a distinct culture, as a distinct civilization, a distinct aspiration. ”https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts